Game Details

Developer: CapcomPublisher: CapcomPlatform: Xbox 360 (reviewed), PS3, PC (planned for November)Release Date: October 2, 2012Price: $59.99Links:Official website | AmazonResident Evil 6 shambles forth this week, a stitched-together monstrosity that bears no small resemblance to the original walking dead, Frankenstein's monster. Capcom's latest is a patchwork assemblage of disconnected ideas and poorly executed gameplay, all of it tied together by a flimsy narrative thread that threatens to snap at any moment beneath the weight of the series' amassed fiction.

There are a few moments of fan-leaning joy to be found, but they're just fleeting chunks of gameplay that nod back to the Resident Evil games of old before giving way to some ridiculously out of place stealth challenge or driving sequence. From a fan's perspective, it's a downright heartbreaking disgrace to Resident Evil 4, the high note that was the series' last game with creator Shinji Mikami.

Resident Evil 6 makes as compelling a case for a series reboot as I've ever seen.

Four flavors of fear, four meandering plotlines

Capcom at least makes an effort to formulate a new approach to Resident Evil gaming in this sixth numbered release. Breaking the larger story down into four separate campaigns, complete with potentially co-op-driven crossover moments, is a cool idea. The execution leaves a lot to be desired, however.

The three main campaigns that you can choose from at the start of the game are all meant to offer stylistically different takes on the series' well-established brand of survival horror. The Leon/Helena section nods heavily to the earliest Resident Evil games, with a slower pace and a more deliberate doling out of the "scare" moments (a term used very loosely here). The Chris/Piers section leans more toward the action focus of RE5 while the Jake/Sherry campaign seems to specifically channel RE3's Nemesis.

That's how it works in theory, at any rate. Each of the three campaigns starts out on roughly the right path. You creep through dark, silent corridors as Leon/Helena, face insurmountable odds as Chris/Piers, and flee constantly from an unstoppable force as Jake/Sherry. The flaws in this design become increasingly apparent with progress, however, as each campaign eventually makes a jarring shift to pure, out-and-out action.

It's the fourth, unlockable campaign, starring Ada Wong, that feels the most classically "Resident Evil." You're alone. You're outnumbered. Your weapons are relatively ineffective and your resources are limited. RE6 never manages to capture the prototypical survival-horror need for careful resource management, but it comes the closest with Ada. Her story only unlocks after the other three campaigns have been completed, however, and just getting that far is asking a lot from the player.

Then there's the overarching narrative, which amounts to a jumbled mass of series lore that has been stitched into an occasionally coherent plot. It's a shame too, since the writing and voice acting in each of the campaigns is actually commendable. You might not know what a C-Virus is or why Umbrella means bad things, but the moment-to-moment relaying of basic facts is handled well. Even if you don't invest in any of these characters, you'll at least understand why they're doing what they're doing.

Why play when you can just mash a bunch of buttons?

Who cares about the story, you say. This is a video game. How does it play? Poorly, I say. It's still fundamentally Resident Evil. The camera sticks tight on the player-controlled character, peering over his or her shoulder to create an intentionally limited field of view. The controls pick up where RE5 left off, handling similarly but adding the ability to move and shoot at the same time.

I'll trot out a bit more praise here: when the action ramps up, RE6 effectively manages to channel some of the best moments of its immediate predecessor. It might not be "classic" Resident Evil, but running around while blasting an assortment of bio-engineered monstrosities in their ugly faces continues to be fun. True, you can have that sort of fun in any number of other games, but the general feel and spirit of the series is definitely captured the best in these sections.

Those moments are unfortunately few and far between, though. Capcom doesn't really seem to have a grasp on what Resident Evil is or should be anymore, and RE6 has a little bit of everything as a result. Do you like sneaking around quietly? Driving snowmobiles? Shooting things from the relative safety of a turret? It's all there in a dizzying shower of disparate ideas, alongside a raft of infuriating quick time events.

Oh yes, you will mash buttons in response to blatant on-screen prompts in Resident Evil 6. All the buttons. Thumbsticks too. And you'll have to try many of these button-mashing events more than once, most likely. Even when you see a quick time event coming, the response window for each prompt too often closes before your brain can recognize the onscreen icon and transmit that information to your fingers. This is most infuriating in the context of boss fights, since failure often results in a Game Over screen.

This also speaks to a larger problem that Resident Evil 6 has: it fails over and over to provide players with enough information to figure out what needs to be done. You might think that you have to shoot at the rampaging monster that's tearing apart your in-flight helicopter from the outside, but in actuality you simply have to survive an invisible timer. If you had known that, you might have also put a bit more effort into conserving ammunition and, in doing so, avoided the Game Over screen that popped up in the next section when you were asked to shoot a fuel tank with your empty clip.

Beyond the campaigns, you've also got Agent Hunt and Mercenaries modes to mess around with. Mercenaries is nothing new; you run around, scoring kills/combos and racking up points as you race against a clock. I only spent a little bit of time in Agent Hunt during the pre-release period; it seems like a fun novelty, but the controls for the bio-organic weapon enemies sucked all the fun out of it for me.

There's also additional replay value in Resident Evil 6's skill system, which sees players earning points through campaign play that can be spent on boosts like improved firearm/melee power, increased item drops, infinite ammo, and the like. Similar features in RE4 and RE5 effectively transformed those games during subsequent playthroughs, but the pacing in each hour-long chapter is so out of whack that it's hard to get excited about jumping back into any of them.

A failure of epic proportions, and perhaps the end of an era

Capcom fumbled badly here, perhaps even to the point that the Resident Evil franchise as we've come to know it is effectively finished. Maybe that's a good thing, though. The game may be a mess, but it also serves to highlight what Resident Evil should not be. I'd like to believe that we've reached a breaking point, and that Capcom will have to rebuild from scratch going forward.

That doesn't help in the here and now, however. Resident Evil 6 is a spectacular failure on nearly every level. The best thing I can say is that the moment-to-moment beats of each campaign are at least coherent and that the action occasionally—very occasionally—leans toward the sort of gameplay we've come to expect from the series in this post-RE4 world. It's a messy and unenjoyable experience though, and it should be avoided by anyone who feels a fan connection to the series.

The Good:

Each campaign's plot is easy to follow if you overlook the frequent nods back to Resident Evil lore.

A few brief sections effectively capture the spirit of the series and what makes it fun.

The Bad:

You're fighting with poor controls and a wildly swinging camera as frequently as you're fighting enemies.

Each campaign loses focus over time, eventually falling back on straightforward action.

Bafflingly short response windows for the abundance of quick time events.

The series' identity is lost in the wash of a wide mix of misplaced gameplay styles.

The Ugly:

The fact that millions will no doubt buy this clunker on name recognition alone.

112 Reader Comments

I know i'm in the minority here, but i actually liked resident evil 5 because it kind of felt like a summer blockbuster with survival horror elements. Having said that, it seems like capcom jumped the shark with this one...

This is very disappointing. The original RE ont he Playstation was a real statement that modern mature gaming had arrived.

Capcom should pause, take a deep breath, remake the original RE for the iPad/Android and get the thing back to its roots. And while I am on the subject, the same could and should happen for Silent Hill and Castlevania.

This is very disappointing. The original RE on the Playstation was a real statement that modern mature gaming had arrived.

Capcom should pause, take a deep breath, remake the original RE for the iPad/Android and get the thing back to its roots. And while I am on the subject, the same could and should happen for Silent Hill and Castlevania.

OOH! ooh! and Turok! I mean he had a quad-rocket launcher and a fusion cannon and there was a Cyber T-Rex... there's gotta be a way to make that magic happen again.

This is very disappointing. The original RE on the Playstation was a real statement that modern mature gaming had arrived.

Capcom should pause, take a deep breath, remake the original RE for the iPad/Android and get the thing back to its roots. And while I am on the subject, the same could and should happen for Silent Hill and Castlevania.

OOH! ooh! and Turok! I mean he had a quad-rocket launcher and a fusion cannon and there was a Cyber T-Rex... there's gotta be a way to make that magic happen again.

This is very disappointing. The original RE ont he Playstation was a real statement that modern mature gaming had arrived.

Capcom should pause, take a deep breath, remake the original RE for the iPad/Android and get the thing back to its roots. And while I am on the subject, the same could and should happen for Silent Hill and Castlevania.

Silent Hill is gone, unfortunately. They did release an HD version of 2 and 3 for PS3, which is pretty awesome. I haven't picked it up because I have the PS2 versions, though.

Too bad. I remember playing RE4, my college roommates watching, for hours. To quote one of them: "Man, I don't really play video games, but I can just WATCH you get killed in this for hours." Damn good game, that. Too bad they couldn't at least replicate a similar experience (if making the story less ridiculous).

RE5 was terrible as you just can't do survival horror with friends, let alone retarded AI that chews your precious bullets. The RE6 demo was enough to seal the end of the RE series for me. I loved the RE remake on the GameCube, it is still one of my all time favourite games and even holds up well graphically all these years later.

The best survival horror I've played this year was silent hill downpour, the bugs do hold it back but I'm still hoping that Konami will eventually release the promised patch. I think this game is an underrated gem, and it was unfairly received by fans and the media. the Alan Wake arcade release was great, but way too easy unfortunately.

RE5 was terrible as you just can't do survival horror with friends, let alone retarded AI that chews your precious bullets. The RE6 demo was enough to seal the end of the RE series for me. I loved the RE remake on the GameCube, it is still one of my all time favourite games and even holds up well graphically all these years later.

This.

Also, can we please get an XBLA/PSN re-release of the Gamecube REmake?

i was absolutely beside myself after playing the demo because i couldn't believe for a second this was a Resident Evil game. not angry or sad, just stunned.

everything about it -- the embarrassingly uninspired & insipid level design, the awful wandering reticule, the ridiculous "lying in wait" zombies, the comically absurd way zombies conveniently liquify & disappear or how hopping over a desk with *GASP* cardboard boxes on it becomes impossible (and don't even get me started on the QTE's) -- reeked of such laziness, i dare say i couldn't fault anyone for taking it further and use the word 'incompetence'.

I got sidetracked in the first sentence. At the risk of derailing the thread in another direction, I thought Frankenstein's monster was assembled from body parts scavenged from various corpses then brought back to life — surely he was never a member of the walking dead?

Maybe it's just me, but Resident Evil is the type of game that could have only been considered scary or "ground-breaking" in 1997.

Try playing the original Resident Evil right now in 2012, and you'll just be laughing your ass off at the bad dialogue, amateur voice acting, and the outdated graphics.

The biggest problem with Resident Evil is the fact that the whole franchise's idea of "horror" is the idea of zombies/monsters coming slowly at you, whilst you are only armed with a weedy, little pistol. This concept could only work for so long, before people decide that it's not scary anymore, and they want something better. I guess this is the reason why Capcom decided to shift Resident Evil away from survival horror.

Don't get me wrong, I love the first four games, and I felt somewhat ambivalent about the 5th one, but the 6th game literally does nothing for me. Mind you, I've only played the demo, so I don't really know if the full game is any better. I thought RE: Revelations for the 3DS was a much better game than 6.

To be fair, the cutscenes still look nice. Has anyone played the XCOM demo? The cutscenes make the game look like a game that came out in the early 2000's... hell, I remember Starcraft 1 having better-looking cutscenes than XCOM

It is a shame to see what has happened to this series. I will admit to enjoying RE5 to some extent, but it felt like it was missing something. In fact, it was the only RE game I ever traded in. I was leary when they announced RE6, and it looks like my fears have been realized.

I wish they would go back to the adventure game format that the original 4 games had (RE 1-3 and Code Veronica). They told much more compelling stories and made you feel like you were awsome for taking out one of the harder boss enemies with only 5 bullets (took out the last boss in CV that way!). RE4 was a blast and a move in the right direction in terms of tension, but it is too bad they did not expand on the horror elements that made the series what it was and decided to focus it on action instead.

I'll buy this game eventually when it goes down in price. It is too bad this game is so terrible (based on the reviews); I would have bought it day one.

RE5 was terrible as you just can't do survival horror with friends, let alone retarded AI that chews your precious bullets. The RE6 demo was enough to seal the end of the RE series for me. I loved the RE remake on the GameCube, it is still one of my all time favourite games and even holds up well graphically all these years later.

The best survival horror I've played this year was silent hill downpour, the bugs do hold it back but I'm still hoping that Konami will eventually release the promised patch. I think this game is an underrated gem, and it was unfairly received by fans and the media. the Alan Wake arcade release was great, but way too easy unfortunately.

The easy way to remedy the whole AI ammo issue is to give Sheva the Pistol and ONLY the pistol. That way she won't use up your weapon type's ammo.

I am very surprised but I don't think I've ever agreed more with a review posted by someone I don't know or wasn't written by me.

Unfortunately I was not so kind in my RE6 review, and that's saying a lot because my RE5 review was a thorough, and deserved, trashing of Capcom.

Do you know what the best part of RE6 was? RE4 HD and CVX HD and Degeneration. Except I already owned RE4HD and RE5 Gold so I paid 90 dollars for RE6 and CVXHD and a Degeneration DVD.

RE6 was fun, in SPITE of itself, we'll give it that much credit. Everything the reviewer said is entirely correct, and I don't know if the reviewer is a hardcore 16 year RE player or not, but if they aren't - they have the same opinion as most real 16 year RE players so it's good enough for me.

There are so many jumbled together, incredibly frustrating gameplay sections relying on forced, linear, horrible game mechanics that, as I continue to play it, now on the last normal campaign of three before I unlock Ada, that each campaign and each chapter tops the last for absolute ridiculosity. You continually question if completion - your sole purpose for gameplay after Leon disappointed you - is even worth it each time a bad camera angle or inexplicable game mechanic causes you to die.